The visual and audio cues of virtual reality are here. Now, the physical cues are also coming. Here is a description of a haptic body suit (alas, not yet available) that provides you with sensations corresponding to what's happening in the VR world. So, if something is crawling on your arm, you feel the tingle. You get shot, you feel an impact (not fatal, of course).

Yes, those tempus fugit coils are a pain to balance. If the clockwise and counterclockwise coils are not in perfect balance then the time machine tends to drift off into the future or past, which makes it really hard to keep parked.

I once read a story about a man who discovered he could read minds. At first it was a lot of fun, but then it got to be quite depressing because he could tell what people really though of him. After a while it got so bad couldn't sleep any more, and he started wandering the streets late at night.

One night as he walked past a dark alley, a mugger jumped out at him with a gun and demanded his money. Our friend said "I'm not afraid of you" and reached for the gun. The gun went off, killing our friend instantly.

When the police arrived, the mugger was still there holding the gun in a daze, trembling. When he saw the police, he looked at them and stammered "I thought the gun was empty".

There is an Asimov story in the I, Robot series about a robot that, due to a factory accident, becomes a mind reader. It eventually went insane trying to resolve the comflicts that came up when it had to lie to prevent hurting people with truths they did not want to hear.